Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. I think we all want reports to be revealed. We think the American people deserve to know what happened with the Russians hacking into Democratic emails and with the Russian involvement in trying to affect the outcome of our elections. I think we all want that.

What do we know so far? We know that we spent $30 million to investigate this, and they have decided and concluded--after doing hundreds of interviews and thousands of subpoenas, they have concluded that President Trump did not collude with the Russians, did not conspire with the Russians, did not commit a crime with the Russians, and the President has said repeatedly he never talked to the Russians. We do know that. That is what we know so far.

But now that we know that, in addition to the Mueller report, we also need to know: Was there malfeasance? Was there misuse of government power? Did President Obama's administration get involved in an election to actually try to manipulate and infiltrate the Trump campaign to entrap them or try to spread information that was incorrect? We need to know that.

So I am asking the Senator by unanimous consent to accept my amendment, which would say that not only will we see the Mueller report, but we will also see the communications between John Brennan, known to have already lied to the Senate about spying on Senate computers, and James Clapper, also known to have lied to the Senate in testimony over the bulk collection of phone records, and their communications with James Comey, who is known to have illegally leaked information about this investigation to the press--that their communications become known to all of us.

We need to know why they decided that the fake Russian dossier was real. The country had concluded it wasn't. No media outlet would produce the Russian dossier because it was so unverifiable. Yet the FBI head and the CIA head kept sending the dossier out to people, having it come back to them again, saying: Oh, my goodness, look at what this Senator gave us. It was what they already had that nobody was believing and nobody was discounting and now the Mueller report has said was fake, was made up. The dossier was not true, but that is what began this entire investigation.

Why should we know about this? Because we don't want this to happen every 2 to 4 years. I don't care whether it is a Democrat President or Republican President. We should not waste the time of the entire country sending spies into campaigns, making false accusations, and tying the country in knots for 2 years. Tying us in knots such that people are at each other's throats and will not talk to each other because we spread this false narrative that President Trump had something to do with the Russians. It was not true. We spent $30 million and now we know it is not true.

We will agree to see the Mueller report as long as the other side will agree to show us the communications that took place in deciding to promote this fake allegation against the President. We want to know whether there was misuse of their office. If that is allowed, then I will agree to the consent request.

I would ask unanimous consent that my amendment be added to the Senator's resolution.

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Mr. PAUL. The Senator made one point that the investigation was begun under Republicans of this dossier.

The Mueller report and the Mueller aspect of this was begun under Republicans, but the actual investigation--the promoting, the passing around of the fake Russian dossier--occurred under President Obama's administration.

What we need to discover and what we do not yet know is, Was President Obama involved? Was this done for partisan purposes? Was this done to try to elect Hillary Clinton? Was this done with mal intent?

We need to know the truth, and to get to the truth, we need not only the Mueller report, but we need every ounce of information about the people at the very top of our intelligence community who were promoting the inclusion of this fake dossier that most American media outlets had discounted as unverifiable and that turned out to be unverifiable.

We based this investigation on a lie. We should investigate who the liars were.

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